


Or No Way

by StoryCloud



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Literally everybody - Freeform, Miguel accepts the terms, conditional love in his eyes ouch, it sucks to have the entire family gang on you, miscommunication kinda, sneaky miguel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-25 09:32:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15637986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StoryCloud/pseuds/StoryCloud
Summary: "You go home my way, or no way." Miguel accepts the terms, but keeping the promise is a lot harder than it sounds.





	Or No Way

It was far harder to fulfil the promise than he’d ever imagined.

The first time, he’d been yanked back to the Land of the Dead like a dog on its collar. But then surrounded by family – **trapped, outnumbered by –** utterly outspoken and with the walls closing in around him, and Imelda’s knowing, final look – the look of someone who had won long before the battle even began, who knew best and had never been challenged, not for nine decades – Miguel had been sent back a second time.

This time, with the image of his vastly deteriorating fingertips frozen in his head. You go home my way, or no way.

It didn’t really occur to him - how frightening the prospect was. When he was getting an earful for running away, for the music, for breaking the _foto_ frame **, for everything,** all he could think about was the vice in his chest; his family’s condemning and disapproving stares. The way his aunt tittered about fairy-tales and his cousins smirked at him.

And Miguel sank.

He sank hard.

That gut-wrenching feeling, that something would be snatched from him – dangled like candy – if he didn’t abide, made it easy for him to flinch whenever he thought of music.

His hands fumbled and lagged in making shoes; he stitched wrong and sanded too thoroughly.

“You’ll get it, mijo.” Came his Papa’s assurances, “You will see.”

He did not see.

…

It was second nature for him to tap things. Glasses, buckets, toys. Outside of the shop that is – his mind was used to that proverbial lock on his body. The pent-up energy that would explode as soon as he left. Like the kid that sits quietly at his desk but sprints as soon as he passes the threshold of the playground doors.

Miguel had reached out to tap some glasses and froze.

Bones, his bones. In his head he saw his hand, see-through and going numb, and Imelda’s stern, piercing stare streaking right through him.

Was that really her threat? If you want to play music, you’ll have to die?

And something in his heart ached. Suddenly his days felt very slow, very empty – he couldn’t hum, he couldn’t ramble lines of song, he couldn’t so much as tap a rhythm with his foot. And it was hard not to, so very hard.

…

He tried to focus on running. Channelling that energy.

After his stunt, his parents barely let him out of their sight. No going out on his own. No going to the roof. (Tio Berto had moved the stacks of crates and fabrics so he couldn’t climb up there.) No leaving the courtyard without his cousins, who would be sure to tattle on him.

But tell on him for what? There was nothing he could do.

Coming back to the courtyard and finding the garbage full of his guitars, records and the tape he’d compiled himself rotting there had make his stomach flip so badly he’d ran inside.

When he heard radios while going to school, his hair would stand up.

After all, Mama Imelda didn’t say he couldn’t listen. But now, whenever he listened, he felt physical sick.

Was this what she felt, all that time ago?

It made Miguel a little less angry at her but nailed in the helplessness even more.

..

Miguel finds the photo after sneaking into Mama Coco’s room, finally breaking down and telling her everything.

She barely heard him, or responded. That was probably good – his story was pretty depressing.

It was only when he started murmuring about how it was all Mama Coco’s Papa’s fault when her hand had shakily reached for the drawer.

And looking through the book filled with songs, and poems, and assurances of love, and that photo – of a young man, with a funny pair of ears and a pale suit, Miguel broke down and cried.

De La Cruiz was not his great-great-grandfather. But someone else who was … very similar in style. But Miguel didn’t have it in him to think about the white suit and Guitar.

The songbook had … given him an idea.

..

A couple months later, Rosa and Abel dubbed Miguel ‘The Worst Shoemaker’ after Abuelita finally decided to stop letting Miguel waste material on ‘attempts’. Not even with careful instruction, step by step with his father leaning over his shoulder so his moustache tickled Miguel’s face, did even the simplest shoe come into being.

Miguel wondered if, deep down, he was sabotaging himself.

All he knew was that when Abuelita sighed and let him go for the day, he felt a rush of something bitter, but something intoxicatingly satisfactory.

Giving up hadn’t been possible. Despite his parents’ hovering, and even his Abuelita rummaging through his bag once when he tried to sneak off to be alone, Miguel had slipped back into old habits.

 (he’d hidden the book back in Mama Coco’s drawer. Abuelita would never find it where it had been hidden all those years)

(It made him feel numb and strange, he knew De La Cruz, he spoke of him in his letters, but why would his friend say he’d written the songs?)

Miguel couldn’t bring it up, that would be insanity.

He’d found a tiny photo-frame, the kind you’re meant to put pet pictures in perhaps, to slip the shred of _foto_ that was Papa Hector into. And he hid it.

A new hiding place had been born; a loose brick in the wall; he had to go under his bed to reach that small corner.

It was there he stored the songs.

Miguel couldn’t sing, hum, tap or play music. But he could do his best inside his head, however awkward and crude. He daren’t hum out a line, but in his head, he could write lyrics.

They wouldn’t stop him.

…

Imelda noticed the change in Miguel during the next Day of the Dead.

The boy would sulk, but like all children, he’d see reason. That was what she’d assured herself. But when they came to the Ofrenda that year, the first she heard of him was that he was absolutely and irrefutably _terrible_ at making shoes.

The show he’d made resided beside Rosa and Abel’s fine handiwork, and her brothers visibly winced in horror at the sight of such bad craftsmanship.

And, she noticed as they moved around the dinner table, the boy was glaring vehemently at her foto whenever he was sure his family wasn’t aware.

Miguel knew for certain that they were here now, or rather, that she was here.

Imelda scoffed to herself – really, this was _ridiculous._ It had been an entire year and he was still being stubborn?

She and her _familia_ spent most of that evening fussing over the state of this grandchild, who would hide smugness in embarrassed smiles whenever abuelita stressed that he was trying his best – a look that reminded Imelda of someone, someone with a broad chin and honeyed words and an infuriating ability to get under her skin – Ernesto.

Realising that bothered Imelda for the remaining week.

What were they to do with that boy?

…

Lusia and Enrique feared Miguel never really forgave his Abuelita for that night.

He’d fallen into line almost … too easily. Nothing hidden, nothing kept secret. His parents should’ve been overjoyed that he was doing absolutely everything he was told.

But it was so unlike Miguel.

His cousins told them that Miguel spent most of his time doodling and scribbling, but whenever they tried to see what he was up to, they’d only find ramblings about how school was boring, and doodles _of dogs._

_(Unaware that he’d always put such notes on the back of his lyrics pages in case they got close.)_

The hidden love for music and the bitterness Miguel felt didn’t simply vanish when his grandmother smashed his guitar – but the boy had never brought it up again.

It was disconcerting, and worrying.

But they didn’t know how to approach it without confusing the poor child – asking if he was still upset about the guitar, a year later, when he himself had never brought it up? It would send mixed messages.

But if Miguel hadn’t always been the odd one out before, he was now.


End file.
